Facebook nixes group seeking Morales 'liquidation'

Wednesday

Jan 28, 2009 at 12:01 AM

BOGOTA, Colombia — The social-networking site Facebook removed a group on Tuesday whose title advocated raising money so a gunman could be hired to "liquidate" Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales.

FRANK BAJAK

BOGOTA, Colombia — The social-networking site Facebook removed a group on Tuesday whose title advocated raising money so a gunman could be hired to "liquidate" Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales.

The Spanish-language group, created in August, had 8,069 members and drew the attention of at least one outraged blogger as of Tuesday, when The Associated Press alerted Facebook about it.

Called "Global collection to hire a sharpshooter to liquidate Evo Morales," the group's first description line stated, "We need to get the money to inspire someone to do it."

Its 20-year-old Bolivian creator, Hony Pierola, denied any malice. He told the AP he started the group "to laugh a little and wouldn't be so stupid as to do it with serious intentions."

However, many of the group's 497 postings were hateful, violating Facebook's terms of use, which ban threatening violence or expressing hatred.

One posting, dated Aug. 10, suggested Morales be "tortured and made to suffer, like he's doing indirectly to many Bolivian people." The vast majority of group members were well under 30, based on the birthdates and photos they posted.

The first Indian president of South America's poorest country, Morales has been a divisive figure as he drives a socialist agenda. On Sunday, Bolivia's voters approved a new constitution that seeks to empower the country's long-suppressed Indian majority.

A Facebook spokeswoman, Jaime Schopflin, said Pierola's group clearly violated the company's terms of use, and that the site was removed within 90 minutes of AP's call. She said she did not know whether anyone had previously alerted the 700-employee company to its existence.

Schopflin acknowledged the challenge of enforcing user terms amid skyrocketing growth; Facebook's users have more than doubled over the past year to 150 million, most outside the United States.

"We do have a multilingual staff. We are trying to scale right now," she said by telephone from the 5-year-old company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. "These things, once they are reported, we remove them immediately."